Tack & Farm
Our Tack & Farm section features an Apparel section to find both practical and fashionable riding attire. If you ride English & Western or Race, many sources are available in the Tack section.
Building a barn? Need an architect for your equine dream home? Find one in Barns & Stalls.
Have a hungry horse? Of course you do! Find a place to buy your feed and tuck your horse in at night in the Bedding & Feed section. Looking for a place to keep your horse? You can find it in the Horse Boarding section. Keep your horse happy and beautiful with resources in our Grooming section.
Traveling? Find a Shipping company or Horse Sitting service if your horse is staying home!
Running and maintaining a farm or stable is a continuous effort, and to help find products or tools you need, please see our Equipment, Fencing and Management Tools sections.
Seeking Services? Find financial and tax expertise in our Accounting section. Companies who will help protect your investment are found in the Insurance section. For those who want legal advice about purchasing, liability, and other issues, please look at the Equine Law section to find an expert. Build and promote your business with teams from Marketing / Videography / Web Design.
Do we need to add more? Please use the useful feedback link and let us know!
By Nikki Alvin-Smith
The foal is the goal and the goal is to keep that foal happy and healthy. Every year foals die due to accidents. While some no-one could have foreseen, some are preventable. Many occur due to poor stall design.
The comfort and safety of ‘Mom’ is paramount. Your mare needs to have space to move around before, during and after birth. The ideal size stall would be 12 x 24 feet for a 16 h.h. horse. To achieve this stall size you may not wish to have a designated stall all year round, so when you design your new barn if you have any thoughts at all that you may have a pregnant mare in your future herd, either by design or accident, it is wise to factor in stall conversion.
If you implement a dividing stall wall that may be removed for foaling season, it will save you much heartache and provide your mare with the space she needs. The boards and/or grills may be removed from the channels and the channels removed to complete this new maternity ward. No sharp edges allowed.
When your mare goes into labor, she may throw herself about the stall as if experiencing a colic. The walls of a stall should therefore be solid board rather than the thinner tongue and groove pine. You can use 2x8 or 2x6 boards. The larger the board you use the stronger. The walls should also have support in the middle through either a wall straightener or brackets and be certain that no nails protrude.
Read more: Horizon Structures Presents….Don’t Fool Around with Foal Safety
by Liv Gude
The dollar store can be a great resource for some of your barn needs in a one stop shop – saving you money and time. Many of these items can be found in other stores, but when you can pick up fake flowers for jumps and baby wipes for cleaning in the same store, why drive all over town? Below are a few of the best things to pick up at your local dollar store – your horse will thank you!
For organizing and cleaning the barn, tack, and maybe even your horse
Microfiber car cleaning gloves will remove the last bit of dust from your horse, your tack, the top of your tack trunk, you name it. The glove design makes swiping the dust away easy.
Microfiber cloths - like the car cleaning mitt, are great for everything, just a different shape and able to get into nooks and crannies.
Double sided scrubby sponges. Good for water buckets, feeders, bits, hooves, super dirty tack.
Dish gloves are super for scrubbing buckets and feeders, especially in winter. The gardening gloves would be great for blister prevention and a bit of warmth when you are in a stall cleaning marathon.
Stackable storage containers. The varying sizes and shapes can help you group like items to be easily retrieved from your tack trunk. Think small containers for braiding kits size things, larger containers for leg wraps and boots.
by Jolyn Young
Driving a truck and trailer is exactly like driving a regular truck, except with a twenty-plus-foot object dragging along behind it that can easily be snagged on curbs, caught on gas pumps, or jack knifed in the Taco Bell drive-through.
But, if you own horses and/or live on a ranch, you will have to drive a truck and trailer at least once, probably through a busy town at lunchtime, whether or not you have the skills and knowledge. Here’s a cheat sheet of tips to help prepare the unsuspecting, legally licensed driver for such a scenario.
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“Wherever you go, your trailer will follow right along behind you.”
I can still hear my dad saying these words to me when I was 16 years old and learning to tow a stock trailer behind his ’96 Ford. It sounds obvious, but it is reassuring to look in the rear view mirror and see that bam, the nose of the trailer is right there, just like it’s supposed to be.
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“You better be barely moving when you get to a stop sign.”
Again, Dad’s words of wisdom ring in my ears every time I approach a red octagon. Especially if I’ve been paying more attention to the radio than the road and am going a little bit too fast to make a smooth stop. That’s when I say “Sorry, boys!” to the horses and cringe as I feel the whole rig shift too far forward as I stop just over the line. Oops.
Alfalfa provides excellent-quality forage but is often underused due to misconceptions
By Dr. Amy Gill, PhD
Horses love the taste of alfalfa and for many, nothing could be better for them. Unfortunately, due to some myths about this forage, it is highly underused as a portion of the total ration. When used correctly, alfalfa can supply a great deal of natural nutrition and has some other physiological benefits as well.
Alfalfa is usually fed as a forage but is also offered as cubes and in chopped form. Few horse owners realize that alfalfa is also commonly included in pelleted concentrate rations and supplements. The addition of alfalfa to a feed provides excellent-quality protein, digestible fiber, digestible energy (calories) and calcium.
Alfalfa is highly recommended to be fed to gestating and lactating mares, growing horses, and horses that are intensively exercised and competing. Geriatric horses also do very well when alfalfa is included in their daily ration because it is so highly digestible compared to other long-stemmed, coarser forages.
Forage makes up between 50 and 90 percent or more of a horse’s diet. Much of the forage part of the diet comes in the form of hay. Because it’s such a big part of the ration, good quality hay can help keep a horse healthy, while poor quality hay can be detrimental.
“As nutritionists and horse owners, we put a big emphasis on the quality of hay we feed,” says Gina M. Fresquez, technical specialist for Equine Technical Services at Purina Animal Nutrition.
“The most important factor determining hay quality is the stage of plant maturity at time of harvest,” says Fresquez. “Young, immature plants contain more nutrients than older, stemmier plants. Though after hay is harvested, the level of hay quality goes beyond the age of the plant at harvest as there are more factors to consider.”
When selecting your horse’s forage, Fresquez recommends keeping these six signs of good quality hay in mind:
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High leaf-to-stem ratio
Think about the leafy greens you eat. You likely prefer greens with leaves rather than just stems. The same is true for your horse.
“Look for more flat leaves in the hay and fewer round stems; this indicates the plant was less mature when cut,” says Fresquez. “More leaves typically mean higher digestibility and nutrient content for your horse.”
Whether you are going to a horse show, a weekend camping trip or attending a riding clinic at a local stable, trailering your horse is going to be involved. Below are 10 Trailering Tips that will help to make your horse’s next ride stress free.
- Load your horse last. After you have gassed up the truck, loaded your tack, feed, clothing, hitched the trailer, checked that the brake lights and turn signals are working, then and only then should you bring your horse out of his stall. Leaving your horse standing in a hot, enclosed trailer while you try to remember where you left your boots or the cook stove for your camping trip, is just not going to get it done. Not only is it tough on the horse, it is tough on the trailer that will often get kicked by the stressed out, impatient horse within.